Chapter 167 Argos

At the same time, during the conversation with the other party, the Magic City also brought up something, that is, the local Dragon TV hoped to conduct an interview with His Royal Highness the Duke of Devonshire.

In fact, the last time Barron came to China and successively invested in Penguin and Alibaba, Dragon TV was among the media that wanted to interview him. However, all these interview requests at that time were declined by him.

This time, the Cavendish Hotel Group under Barron's name is once again spending huge sums of money to build a luxury hotel in Shanghai. Dragon TV also hopes to take this opportunity to conduct an exclusive interview with the young Duke from England.

Thinking that he was interested in promoting the castle manor tourism project under Grace Cultural Tourism Group in China, Barron agreed.

However, he also proposed that he would like to find another way, that is, after he returns to England, he can invite Dragon TV's filming team to go to his manor for filming, accept interviews in the manor, and visit his manor. manor.

Moreover, all the expenses for this team's trip to England can be provided by Barron.

Dragon TV was also very interested in his suggestion. After all, being able to visit the manor of a top British nobleman and interview the Duke there was a very good idea. I'm afraid the audience would not like it. Will also be very interested.

Therefore, this matter has been determined. After Barron's Asia trip is completed and he returns to England, the team here will set off.

…

"You have a very good image, and you have also learned some Chinese from Laura. This is a very good thing for Chinese people to improve their goodwill, so there will also be some interviews during this period. Before Rob Pike arrives, In addition to continuing to discuss the specific matters of the Devonhill Bund Hotel with the Magic City, we are also helping Grace Cultural Tourism Group conduct pre-heating publicity."

Next, Barron and his party will go to Japan, so before Rob Pike, CEO of the Cavendish Hotel Group, sets off to the Magic City to accept the specific matters regarding the Devonshire Hotel's settlement in the Magic City, Yulia Will stay here for now.

By now, they had stayed in China for more than ten days. Next, they were preparing to leave China and go to Japan.

But before leaving China, Barron took Wang Wanting to Hangzhou and met Alibaba's boss Ma.

Boss Ma told Barron that in addition to Alibaba’s B2B business at this time, they are also preparing a new business for domestic individual consumers, which is Taobao.

Barron knew that this would be a major move for Alibaba. After launching Taobao, Alibaba began its journey to become China's domestic e-commerce giant.

In addition, accompanied by Boss Ma, Barron also visited Yiwu and was full of praise for the scale of transactions here.

"Previously, I thought of helping merchants here to sell their products abroad, but recently I also discovered that the domestic market also has great potential, so I came up with the idea of ​​establishing Taobao."

Boss Ma introduced to Barron enthusiastically.

But when he proposed to visit here, Barron also had other ideas.

Through the operation of Duke's Strictly Selected Supermarkets, Barron's has now opened up a situation in the high-end market. However, after all, the concept of organic food is just in its infancy in Europe and the United States at this time, so in terms of overall scale, it cannot be as big as Retail giants like Walmart, Carrefour and Tesco are so huge.

But now in the British market, there are already retail giants such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Kingfisher. If we enter these businesses, how can we open up the situation and compete with these giants who already have scale advantages?

Leveraging the power of China's "World Factory" and on the basis of good quality control, we can provide British consumers with high-quality and low-price products. This is a direction that Barron is currently thinking of.

Previously, Barron still had some doubts about the quality of Huaxia's products at this time. After all, during this period, Huaxia's products were indeed adopting a strategy of hitting the market at low prices. However, after coming to Yiwu this time, he looked at some products carefully. Lun has a lot more confidence.

So, just when Barron and his party left China and took a chartered flight to Japan, in England, after acquiring O2 Telecom, DS Industrial Investment Company once again asked Home Retail Group, the owner of Argos, a well-known British department store chain retailer. They hope to fully acquire this department store chain retailer with more than 400 stores in the UK and Ireland at a price of 600 million pounds.

Argos is one of the top merchandise retailers in the UK. Except for food, it sells almost all kinds of merchandise, with a total of 17,000 varieties and specifications.

Especially in the sales of toys, small appliances and home electronics, as well as furniture, gold and silver jewelry and sports and leisure products, Argos's sales performance is considered to be unmatched by other sellers.

Today, Argos has more than 400 branches across the UK and Ireland, employing nearly 20,000 employees and having more than 15 million regular customers.

The reason why Barron was most interested in buying this retailer was that since its establishment, Argos has adopted a different business approach from traditional retailers.

It captures the essence of life in modern British society: there are more and more people who live affluent lives but have limited leisure time, especially teenagers who know how to use modern network technology and are easy to accept new ideas, and are its loyal customers.

Therefore, in terms of operations, Argos embodies its core capabilities in satisfying customers with the most convenient shopping method and providing a variety of style choices and high-quality and low-priced products.

This can be seen from its business purpose - we provide the most convenient shopping method and dedicate to customers the most affordable and high-quality goods and services.

Argos provides customers with a variety of communication platforms to facilitate their shopping anytime, anywhere.

Customers can choose to go to an Argos store, send a mobile message, or call the 24-hour toll-free service hotline.

A variety of shopping channels meet the needs of different consumption styles and provide customers with maximum convenience.

Argos store operations are also completely different from traditional store operations.

When you walk into any Argos store, you won't see shelves, let alone merchandise - the merchandise is stored in warehouses behind the store or upstairs.

If customers want to shop, they can browse the shopping guide books or posters displayed in the store. These materials are readily available in all stores, and customers can take them home and make a selection slowly.

All products sold are described in these written materials, and are accompanied by product codes and color pictures.

Warehouse-style chain stores have many advantages: they can minimize costs, do not require large stores, nor do they require many employees to be responsible for sales, which greatly reduces housing rental and human resource costs - goods do not need to be placed on shelves , and also avoid possible damage that may occur during the circulation of goods.

Argos is a listed company, and Home Retail Group holds a majority stake in the company. Based on the closing price of the previous trading day, Argos's market value is around 550 million pounds, so DS Industrial Investments increased part of the premium. , offered £600 million to acquire Argos from Home Retail Group.